OpenSSO Express is a very interesting product as
it is an integral part of our official
Roadmap
and is fully supported.
Sun will answer questions and will fix bugs on it but,
unlike with OpenSSO Enterprise, customers are required to upgrade to a later Express or to the
Enterprise binary to get the fixes.

The upgrade requirement means that the sustaining tail
is much shorter, and manageable, which is why we can push the Express releases as often as we do.
An Express release is not for all types of customers but it is ideal for those that want the latest features
now and are willing to upgrade later;
and those that do not want them just wait for the Enterprise releases.
To simplify the sales story,
the support plan for OpenSSO Enterprise includes OpenSSO Express.

Sunday Jan 25, 2009

... the JCP has become increasingly irrelevant... ... most of us have simply moved on to open source Java technologies

I disagree with the implication that the JCP and Open Source are mutually exclusive.
Although the JCP can improve - and Open Source can help there
as shown by how the
JSR 311 EG develops JAX-RS -
I believe users benefit the most from the combination of a strong standards body and open source.

Many of the GlassFish Server new customers are an example of this interaction:
they are replacing expensive closed source AppServers with GlassFish.
The strong Java EE standard means that the transition is relatively easy;
the transparency of GlassFish (facilitated by Open Source) further simplifies
that port,
and Open Source in GF also guarantees to the customer that the cost cannot be
unreasonable - otherwise a fork would appear.

The standard enables easy entry into and easy exit from different implementations and enables
competition;
Open Source injects good qualities into that competition.
And competition is good for customers.

Sunday Nov 23, 2008

Commercial Open Source is a game changer, but it is also a game of balances between different interests:
the free user and the paying customer,
the individual developer and the partner and the
corporate developer,
short-term adoption and long-term revenue.
There are a number of different business models for OpenSource that attempt to navigate these interests
and
Sun follows a combination of support, services, hardware/systems drag,
and Add-Ons.

Sun just announced a new Add-On as part of the
MySQL Enterprise Subscription.
The MySQL Query Analyzer is designed to save time and effort in finding and fixing problem queries;
"time and effort vs money" being the trade-off between the free and for-pay offerings.
For details, check the
Overview article,
Zach's
Introduction
and the interview with the project lead,
Mark Matthews.

A number of the reactions are negative;
I suspect the biggest problem is not the specifics of the new business model
- there are many valid Open Source business models -
but that this is a change in the assumptions under which many
people interacted with the Spring framework.
One of the advantages we had at GlassFish
is that we designed and advertised the community and enterprise model at the same time.

The TSS thread also reminded me of Scott McNealy's point about
Cost-of-Exit;
one of the benefits of standards with multiple implementations is that
they encourage vendors to provide good service because the CoE is low.
And I'll insert a plug for the
EJB 3.1 Webinar.

BTW,
Rail Gauges are a
good example of the "Cost of Exit":
Spain standardized on
Iberian Gauge in the mid-19th century;
there are plans to switch to
standard gauge,
but I'll believe it when it happens...

Sunday Jul 13, 2008

Today we crossed the 150K mark with the GlassFish registrations
(150,087 to be precise).
We started the program late December 07, with the
GlassFish v2U1 release
(announcement),
ramping up since then to a current rate around 25K registrations a month.

The program is totally voluntary and
the high registration numbers in the program - even in its current, nascent form - is another indicator of
the interest on the
GlassFish Server.

Monday Mar 31, 2008

We have started
GlassFish For Business,
a news blog that will cover Deployment and Business Needs around
GlassFish
and will report on Sun's offerings like
our Enterprise Support, Training and Partner programs.